I have decided to practice with a variety of different materials. Since my response to Saville was in pencil, I have decided to develop my drawings in to colour. Pencil crayon is a medium that is not often used, however it is still possible to achieve realistic and accurate results. Whilst researching various child portrait artists I came across Anna Gilhesphy.
In contrast to the historical portraits of children, where the children are painted wearing formal clothing and are painted to sit and look respectable, which I have visited at the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery; The portrait artists in this century, paint children in their natural postures whether that be smiling, laughing, running wither their hair blowing through the wind, the artists choose to paint them being children. This was one of the first things that struck me when researching the historical paintings of mother and child. The children were not shown being themselves. They were to be seen but not heard. This perhaps stems from the Byzantine era where even Jesus was depicted as having the anatomical features of a man, yet the overall body size of a baby. However, the 21st century artists such as Saville and Gilshespy choose to drawn and paint the children in their natural states. This is a beautiful concept which I have considered when producing a response.
Gilhesphy is a British portrait artist who lives and works in Amsterdam. I have produced an artist research page in response to my research. I was attracted to the portraits of Gilhesphy because of her ability to achieve such detail with pencil. I was amazed at the realistic appearance of each child and this inspired me to also practice with this medium. Gilhespy also uses other mediums such as acrylic and oil, however I have chosen to focus on the medium of coloured pencil.
In response to Gilshespy, I have produced my own coloured pencil child's portrait. This is again of my nephew who is soundly sleeping. I have used ordinary crayon pencils, along with soft pastel pencils to provided added texture. The colour palette I used varied considerably. I would often use a moss green or blue in the skin tone when creating shadow or areas of darkness. These are quite unthinkable colours when drawings the skin tone however they were needed in order to give an accurate representation of the child's skin. I used pale yellows and pale pinks in order to create areas of light. I also chose to draw the drawings on an off-white sugar paper background. I found that this seemed to offset the drawing very well and really emphasised the colours of the child. This also helped due to the fact that the baby was also wearing white. The off-white background allowed me to highlight with a white soft pastel in order to show the delicate folds in the baby's top.
This is a very natural state for a child to be in; sleeping. It serves to emphasises the innocence and youth of the child. Furthermore, it should also be noted that in this case the child is also wearing white. This was not done on purpose however since researching the symbolism of the colour white, I now know that it is a symbol of innocence and youth which again serves to reflect the sleeping state of the child.
In evaluation, I have taken inspiration from the technique of Gilhespy. I would perhaps like to use this medium along with paint as I found it easy to use and the colours were easy to pick.
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